An Eve Online player recently revealed his true self by committing one of the game's grandest thefts ever.

Eve Online schemes are nothing new, but they always remain interesting, especially when enormous enough. In one of the biggest thefts to ever hit the game, the leader of the Titans 4 U investment opportunity has stolen and dissolved all of its assets for a cool 850 billion ISK (in-game currency).

To define what this number means, last month a couple of players inadvertently blew up 74 PLEX, an in-game item that can be redeemed for game time, worth 22 billion ISK and about $1295. 850 billion ISK could purchase 2575 PLEX, worth $45,000 according to Massively. That's noticeably more.

Titans 4 U was run by "Bad Bobby" since last summer and was thought to be completely safe against this type of pilfering. As we now know, nothing is ever safe in Eve Online. The investment venture held items such as several valuable in-game blueprint original copies as well as 156 billion ISK. The blueprints were locked down and were only supposed to be released by the vote of five of Titans 4 U's shareholding members, ensuring that Bad Bobby would never be able to get at them by himself with less than 50% of Titans 4 U's shares.

Everything went wrong for investors when Bobby initiated a vote to add more shares and more trustees. This actually ended up providing more shares to Bobby, not to new trustees, and he now had enough to unlock the Titans 4 U fortune by his lonesome. Billions of investors' ISK were now in the hands of Bad Bobby.

Massively calculates that 850 billion ISK would be able to keep an Eve Online account running for 214 years when used to buy PLEX. I've never played Eve Online myself, but it truly sounds like an awesome game to play if you want the experience of embezzling billions, without any real world consequences.

EVE Online: Its not your reflexes or your equipment that matter, its your accounting skills :) I tried to get into EVE, but it was too damn scary. Well done to this guy though as the other shareholders really deserve what they got if they didn't see it coming.

I saw one of the offical eve trailers recently (I don't think it was new) and it had a similar plan laid out. Although said plan was about inflitrating an enemy corporation, stealing its loot and dissolving it.

Gloating Swine hit the nail on the head. You hear all these amazing stories of what goes on in game, but the game is just so dull.

Arachon:I would never trust someone called 'Bad Bobby' with my money, that's for sure.

I would never trust someone foolish enough to play EVE Online.

Only an idiot puts themselves in this situation.

EVE is a game no more no less, it's not foolish in and of itself to play.

The person you should never trust is a person foolish enough to consider ISK as 'real' money or saves their money as PLEX. Most eve online players pay to play and occasionally redeem PLEX.

Just because you can have your money there doesn't mean you should, it's still a game and one in which political backstabbing is a fair mechanism. You wouldn't seriously invest your money in a nation that ran allowed unregulated business, but you may dabble in it's economy.

Arachon:I would never trust someone called 'Bad Bobby' with my money, that's for sure.

I would never trust someone foolish enough to play EVE Online.

You buy PLEX, which are now items. Which can be stolen ingame.

So you can literally have you RL cash, in this digital form, maliciously taken from you.

Only an idiot puts themselves in this situation.

No not really. That's a common mistake made by those who just read news feeds about Eve tho.

See, most people that actually want to use PLEXes instead real money for their game time just buy it and redeem it right away. No one can steal it from you if you use it. They are however treated as every other item if you use them as a form of in game currency just like in real life we use gold bars for example or bank bonds. If someone decides to use them in such way, they take the risk.

EVE is a game no more no less, it's not foolish in and of itself to play.

The person you should never trust is a person foolish enough to consider ISK as 'real' money or saves their money as PLEX. Most eve online players pay to play and occasionally redeem PLEX.

Just because you can have your money there doesn't mean you should, it's still a game and one in which political backstabbing is a fair mechanism. You wouldn't seriously invest your money in a nation that ran allowed unregulated business, but you may dabble in it's economy.

No not really. That's a common mistake made by those who just read news feeds about Eve tho.

See, most people that actually want to use PLEXes instead real money for their game time just buy it and redeem it right away. No one can steal it from you if you use it. They are however treated as every other item if you use them as a form of in game currency just like in real life we use gold bars for example or bank bonds. If someone decides to use them in such way, they take the risk.

Except that ISK is exchangeable for services that cost real-life money, so economically speaking ISK is worth real money.

Now, I imagine for the majority of players the risk is completely manageable (since they probably don't have much money in game). However, for those that pass a certain point, getting a ship stolen/destroyed could be the equivalent of losing $50, $100, or even $1000. Once you're dealing with those sort of numbers you have to question why the players don't just "cash out" as opposed to accumulating more and more in-game assets (and therefore risk).

And this is why I don't play EVE. Apart from not having the money. But maybe if I embezzle the money in EVE I can have enough money to play EVE. But first I would need to get the money to play EVE to embezzle funds in EVE to get to play EVE. I'll probably have to embezzle some funds in an infinite loop.

Arachon:I would never trust someone called 'Bad Bobby' with my money, that's for sure.

I would never trust someone foolish enough to play EVE Online.

You buy PLEX, which are now items. Which can be stolen ingame.

So you can literally have you RL cash, in this digital form, maliciously taken from you.

Only an idiot puts themselves in this situation.

Oh wow! I've only ever tampered with EVE online for about... a half hour before I got bored, so I never knew how the system really worked, and, I must say, wow that doesn't sound like a very safe investment at all... -,-;

It's always such a treat when things go awry in EVE. I'd be very compelled to play this game if after doing some research about it I wasn't 99% sure if you weren't around at its launch you won't accomplish jack squat.

Well played BadBobby, you win the evil genius award this month. The prize is a fully staffed and functioning volcanic lair complete with shark tank to drop people into.

EVE is a game no more no less, it's not foolish in and of itself to play.

The person you should never trust is a person foolish enough to consider ISK as 'real' money or saves their money as PLEX. Most eve online players pay to play and occasionally redeem PLEX.

Just because you can have your money there doesn't mean you should, it's still a game and one in which political backstabbing is a fair mechanism. You wouldn't seriously invest your money in a nation that ran allowed unregulated business, but you may dabble in it's economy.

No not really. That's a common mistake made by those who just read news feeds about Eve tho.

See, most people that actually want to use PLEXes instead real money for their game time just buy it and redeem it right away. No one can steal it from you if you use it. They are however treated as every other item if you use them as a form of in game currency just like in real life we use gold bars for example or bank bonds. If someone decides to use them in such way, they take the risk.

Except that ISK is exchangeable for services that cost real-life money, so economically speaking ISK is worth real money.

Now, I imagine for the majority of players the risk is completely manageable (since they probably don't have much money in game). However, for those that pass a certain point, getting a ship stolen/destroyed could be the equivalent of losing $50, $100, or even $1000. Once you're dealing with those sort of numbers you have to question why the players don't just "cash out" as opposed to accumulating more and more in-game assets (and therefore risk).

Well, they can't really "cash out", as you say. When they say "$45,000" of EVE Online assets stolen, they're just comparing the monetary value of game time (PLEX) to the in-game money value of the assets stolen. X Cost of subscription for certain amount of time in IRL Money = Y number of PLEX for equivalent game time = Z Value in in-game currency.

In other words, you can compare the value of in-game assets to real-world money, but there's no mechanism in place to exchange in-game assets for real-world money.

Good thing for the guy implicated in this heist. If you COULD exchange EVE stuff for real money, he could be probably be brought up on grand larceny charges.

Except that ISK is exchangeable for services that cost real-life money, so economically speaking ISK is worth real money.

Now, I imagine for the majority of players the risk is completely manageable (since they probably don't have much money in game). However, for those that pass a certain point, getting a ship stolen/destroyed could be the equivalent of losing $50, $100, or even $1000. Once you're dealing with those sort of numbers you have to question why the players don't just "cash out" as opposed to accumulating more and more in-game assets (and therefore risk).

What do you mean cash out? You can't change ISK to real money. You can change ISK to game time. Those are two different things. Sure, since game time can also be bought for real money you could call it ISK - > dollars exchange but it doesn't work quite like that. It's a one side transfer only. You can change your real money for ISK, but you can't change ISK for real money.

Only game that allowed cash-outs was Second Life, but that's hardly a game, more of a virtual gallery/marketplace. Other option involves breaking the EULA and ebaying your account, but then such account can be deleted/banned/wiped.My WoW account at the time i quit the game was worth probably hundreds of dollars considering the top tier gear, pvp ratings, etc. i had, but if someone would hack that account and steal all my gold, would it mean i lost real money?